Torg Eternity – Dead Legion
Lady of Rouge
Mississippi Coast – Just Outside the Living Land
It was supposed to be a milk run.
They were there to sneak onto this oil rig, release the legs and let their escort haul it away with the little fleet of tugboats. Those people who asked for their help, the Delphi Council, would turn it into a supply base for expeditions they'd send into that jungle full of dinosaurs and lizard people that'd completely covered the east coast.
The jungle called the Living Land.
But then that hurricane going by the gulf had suddenly changed direction, and the oil rig was right in the way. The Delphi Council had thrown caution to the winds and moved every available asset to rescue it as fast as they could. Assets including a pair of the only Storm Knights in the area, who'd been sent in first to secure the right before their escort of boat captains pulled it out of the hurricane's path.
But of course, the rig had been inhabited. By a small clan of those lizard people who were the most civilized thing to crawl out of the Living Land.
Which probably would've been no problem for the Storm Knights, except for one thing.
The lizard people were wearing fatigues and armed with assault rifles. They weren't supposed to do that. They were supposed to have spears and war paint, and that was it.
"What's the matter, boys?! You gonna let a girl show you how to use a gun?" Kristina taunted.
Another one of the gun-toting lizard people fell, cut down by return fire from Kristina Rouge's own rifle. She wiped sweat away from her brow and swiped the rifle back and forth across the surface of the deck. The only sound was the whrrrr of the hurricane winds in the distance; no more lizard people jumped out to avenge their dead tribemates.
"Guess that takes care of them," she breathed.
Lizard people firing guns was strange enough, but Kristina Rouge was quite a sight herself. Clad in a black sports bra and matching hot pants under her denim vest, black combat boots with neon red and yellow laces, fingerless black gloves and a bandolier of bullets across her torso. Her fiery red hair was pulled back into a pair of pigtails, her hair laced through with a series of barrettes depicting a bunch of bananas, a winking pink unicorn, and a collection of other random images.
Looking in the mirror, she'd kind of thought she looked like an anime character come to life. Some of the people she'd met after adopting this look called her a "gun bunny". She still wondered what that meant.
The Delphi Council encouraged her to make herself look as flamboyant as she could, to make a lasting impression on everyone who saw her. The Possibility Wars, the Council called everything that was going on, needed really visible heroes. Kristina hadn't really understood when they tried to tell her why, but being fast and flamboyant was already part of the person she'd chosen to become.
Before all this crap about other realities had started.
"Looks like that's it, Jak!" she called over her shoulder. There was no reply. "Jak…?"
Again, she scanned the deck. There was nobody in sight except the bodies of the lizard people she'd finished shooting.
"Damn it!" Kristina snarled. "Where did that idiot go now?"
"We have them on the run, Kristina!" bellowed the other Storm Knight who'd come aboard the rig with her. He stepped over the body of one of the lizard people, yanking his weapon out of the wound in their back that had claimed the reptile's life.
Jak the Axe was a caveman, or barbarian, or something like that; Kristina was still trying to get her head around all of this. She'd been he'd been a normal man once, until the jungle appeared and covered the east coast. Then he'd been "converted" over to what he'd have been like if he'd been born in the Living Land, the other world that had infected the territory where he'd been. The one with all the dinosaurs and lizard people.
And now he was a huge man covered in muscles, a thick brown beard and not much else. All he wore was a loincloth and foot wraps made from the skin of some prehistoric beast he'd slain. Probably the same one whose teeth hang on a cord around his neck.
But whatever animal it'd been, it had definitely been killed by the huge stone axe Jak was holding above his head as he chased a lizard man into the darkening depths of the oil rig's hallways.
Jak grinned in primal satisfaction as the lizard man glanced back over his shoulder, eyes wide open in unmistakable fear. Fear of Jak the Axe, and how painfully the warrior would crush the life out him, Jak knew for certain.
He stopped, measured the distance between him and the fleeing lizard man, then reared back his namesake axe to throw. "So die all the scaly cowards who serve Baruk Kaah!" bellowed Jak the Axe, already smiling victoriously.
Suddenly there was a sound, just before Jak felt a piercing pain through his torso. It was a sound that might have once been familiar to Jak's brutish mind, before his transformation into a powerful primitive.
All his great strength seemed to drain from his body. Powerless now, he crashed to his knees and sank to the floor. The only think Jak felt was the warm ooze as a puddle of blood spread out from the wound that'd penetrated his body.
It had been the sound of a gunshot.
Out of the shadows stepped a lizard person holding a smoking revolver. They waved to the one Jak had been chasing, who nodded obediently and followed his savior into the shadows.
Kristina Rouge followed. A trail of tiny red droplets of lizard blood led along the floor I front of her, no doubt left by her partner's axe.
The only light in the cold hallways below the oil rig's decks was the tiny flashlight attached to the barrel of her rifle. And knowing more of the lizard people had to be down there, burning for revenge against the invaders who'd killed their allies, sent a cold chill up Kristina's spine. Suddenly Kristina imagined this was what it'd felt like to be in the movie, Alien.
"Wonder if Jak remembers hearing about that movie," she muttered, then cursed herself.
She knew better than to give herself away at a time like this. But then, when had there ever been a time like the Possibility Wars? When had things ever walked the Earth like the lizard people they were up against now?
They.
That word froze in Kristina's mind as she stopped suddenly.
Because in front of her was the body of Jak the Axe, laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Sightless eyes stared right through Kristina Rouge, the Storm Knight who'd been his partner for only a few short weeks. Any hope of getting back to the family he mentioned remembering having, shattered. Even though she knew it was leaving herself vulnerable, she crouched down and closed Jak's eyes.
"Your family may never know it, but you were a hero, Jak," she whispered.
Slowly she rose, subtly looking around for whoever had killed her prehistoric partner. No-one was in sight, but in the distance she could just hear the scrape of clawed feet running.
"I'll do it," Kristina whispered. "I'll clear this rig so they can drag it away. Least we can do is give you a proper burial." Then as quietly as she could, Kristina Rouge ran off in the direction of the retreating footsteps.
Minutes passed as Kristina followed the sounds through the emptied hallways, around corners and up and down steps into the guts of the oil rig. Every little while she stopped and listened to be sure if they were still running, but after a few checks, realized they'd stopped. She slowed down too and went cautiously onward. A few steps and she leaned over to see a column of light spilling out of a door partway down the hall.
While she snuck closer to the door, Kristina listened hard. From inside came sounds of metal ringing against other metal, making her curious enough to dare to peer inside and see what was going on. Inside, two lizard people were gathering up guns and bits of electronics and throwing them into bags on the floor. One was green-scaled and had on the same brown fatigues as the rest of the reptiles she'd seen boarding the oil rig.
The other one, though, was even more sinister than an upright lizard with a rifle. This lizard had white scales with black patches here and there on their body. Over a black t-shirt and the tattered remains of a pair of blue jeans, the white lizard person had put on a lab technician's smock covered in smudges in a disturbing array of colors. This lizard wore metal bracelets on their arms and ankles, and had more jangling on a piece of cord around their neck like a necklace. There was even one worn in front of her eye, like some kind of piercing.
But another second's inspection told Kristina they weren't rings or bracelets. They were metal clamps, for hoses or tubes or something. The they were wearing around the one eye had teeth like a gear, or a cog. These lizards had turned maintenance parts into…jewelry?
Since when did the lizard people do that? From everything Kristina had heard about them, they worshipped a goddess of life. They despised "dead" things, like technology and advanced weapons.
Except…all over the place, people were transforming to the new nature of reality when the minions of one of the invading High Lords conquered somewhere and converted it to their native reality. That'd happened to Jak the Axe, her now ex-partner. Who'd been a white collar worker until New York turned into a prehistoric jungle, and he'd turned into a caveman along with the rest of it.
But Kristina had never heard of that happening to the people who came from those invading realities. Could that by why these lizard people were wearing clothes, and interested in guns? Because somehow, they'd switched over to Earth's reality? Where power came from weapons and technology, and not the blessings of a tribal goddess.
Suddenly the white lizard stopped what she was doing and swung her head in the direction of the door. The other lizard seemed to realize what they were indicating and leveled his weapon in Kristina's direction. A controlled burst from her own weapon cut him down before he had the chance to fire.
Now it was just Kristina and the white lizard, who was staring savagely at her through the gear worn over their eye.
"You really think you've got me cornered, don't you sssstormer?" the white lizard hissed.
"You gonna wiggle your way out through an air vent or something?" Kristina taunted. Not exactly her most memorable material, but like most people, she was still figuring out this whole weird war.
There was no time to think about clever lines. The lizard person's restort was the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. From a pistol concealed in the shadow of the white lizard's jacket. But instinct took over, and Kristina Rouge threw herself to her left, rolled across the span of the doorframe and landed on her belly with her rifle brought up to return fire.
Except there was no-one to return fire on. The room was empty except for the green lizard's body. Both bags of weapons were gone, and so was the white lizard. Kristina could just see the tip of a white tail wriggling up out sight beyond a tiny slit of a window, its glass smashed out.
Kristina hefted her gun and ran for the stairs.
When she broke out onto the deck of the oil rig again, Kristina blinked her eyes a few times at the sudden brightness of the sunlight. Its light didn't do anything at all to distract her from the chill in the air. That hurricane this whole operation was trying desperately outrun had gotten closer; a pillar of dark air was whirling closer in the distance.
And running across the top of the rig in the hurricane's direction was the white lizard person, holding a pistol in each clawed hand.
"Looks like I need to move fast," Kristina muttered, but smiled. "Good thing that's what I'm best at."
She slung the rifle across her slender shoulders with its strap and went into a wild, bent-over sprint, straight at the fleeing lizard person. The reptile seemed to be heading toward where a ladder led down off the side of the oil rig, but Kristina had no intention of letting her target get to it. She put on a burst of speed then launched herself at the white lizard person, tackling her and rolling across the cold metal surface.
Kristina punched with all her strength at what she hoped would be vulnerable spots on her reptilian opponent's body. The base of the neck, the wrists of the hands holding those pistols. She knew she was probably no match for this creature in a one-on-one fight, but Kristina also knew the Delphi Council would want one of these creatures taken alive. To know more about how they'd become so interested in technology.
If she was going to deliver a prisoner, Kristina knew enough to know she needed to even the odds, and that meant disarming her opponent. A last, powerful chop to the wrist knocked the pistol from the lizard's hand. Before they had a chance to retaliate, Kristina knocked them down with a leg-sweep and kicked their other gun away.
The lizard person focused its beady eye on her, through the cog dangling in front of it. Through its cog eye. Instantly that locked in Kristina's mind as its name. Cogeye.
And then Cogeye lashed out and raked her jagged reptilian claws across Kristine's side, shredding through her Kevlar vest and drawing blood.
A surprised gasp exploded out of her mouth.
Her mind locked onto the image of red blood, oozing down her side and staining her body armor. All of a sudden the rifle slung across Kristina's back seemed too heavy, and her knees were buckling. Even though a voice she recognized as her survival instincts told her she needed to stand strong. Funny. She'd learned to stop listening to that voice for so long. Now it sounded so important.
And Kristina did manage to listen. She sucked in a breath of cool, salty air and focused. About what the people from the Delphi Council had said about people like her. How Storm Knights like her had the power of "possibilities," which would let them bend reality to a limited extent.
With all her might, Christina concentrated, and saw the scene replaying in her head. Of Cogeye slashing their claws across her side, drawing blood. But as she focused on that, another version of that attack appeared, where Kristina saw the attack coming a second earlier, and juked to the left just enough for Cogeye's claws to only make some interesting tears in her clothes.
Before that became the reality they lived in, Kristina Rouge whipped out her stun gun and shoved the electrified end into Cogeye's throat.
"Haaaaeeeuggghhhlllllghggggggrrraaaaaggh!" Cogeye shrieked, her torso and arms twitching almost comedically. For a fraction of a second hatred seemed to burn in the eye framed by that cog, then the lizard went down and slammed into the deck. They twitched a few extra times, then were still.
It took Kristina a second to make her vision un-blur after what she'd just done. With all the willpower she had, she dragged herself across deck and tied Cogeye's wrists together.
Then, as planned, she fired a flare to indicate the oil platform had been secured.
"…let your spawn be dried to a dead husk in the unrelenting rays of the sun!" Cogeye screeched, the latest in a string of otherworldly epithets Kristina Rouge was ignoring. Her head was still spinning from the weird sensation of bending reality. It got easier, the Delphi Council had said. It was still a finite thing, they warned, and Kristina Rouge was determined not to rely on it too much.
As the platform was hauled away by the little civilian fleet, there was a shock that traveled through the whole right. She looked over the side in alarm, vaguely afraid of having to fight some prehistoric behemoth in the water all by herself, then let out a sigh of relief.
It was only the prehistoric behemoth she and Jak had killed on the way in, red clouds spreading through the water surrounding the body. Not only that, the water churned as smaller prehistoric horrors gorged themselves on the dead one floating among them. It was probably the luckiest day of their lives, Kristina thought.
Cogeye was still ranting at her, but Kristina lay back and looked up into the sun. "Fighting dinosaurs and lizard people…this isn't what I'm meant for," she mumbled. "I'm meant for speed…fighting human bad guys…I don't know anything about these tribes and gods and rituals that're going on in that Living Land place. There's got to be a bunch of other Storm Knights out there that could use somebody like me."
As she said it, the sun seemed to get a little brighter in affirmation. And Cogeye's litany of insults sounded even farther away. Kristina smiled. "Yeah. Big, crazy world like this has turned into? There's gotta be somebody out there who could use somebody like me."